Clearly professional rugby does not operate on a basis that one side will beat another simply because they should.

Indeed the beauty of the sport as a whole is the fact that Northampton Town can win at Liverpool, Pertemps Bees can beat London Wasps and Buster Douglas can knock out Mike Tyson.

However, everyone with any interest in such matters knows that some encounters are more likely to produce a victory than others and for Bees, previously winless Plymouth Albion at home is about as low as the Championship fruit hang.

Put more critically, if Russell Earnshaw's men cannot beat such a palpably limited team, which game are they going to win this season?

How they must look forward to the visit of Moseley because surely the sight of the old enemy will inspire them to greater heights than those reached against predictable Albion, in whom Bees seemed barely interested.

Such a comment is not entirely fair on those individuals who put in decent performances, step forward Jack Preece - again, Semisi Taulava and Adrian Griffiths.

The trouble is Moseley won't appear for another five weeks by which time Bees could have lost their first eight matches. And they will too if they continue to inflict such self harm.

Not only do they lack a reliable goal-kicker, their lineout remains an embarrassment which means that whenever they turn in such a half-cocked performance as this, littered with penalties and errors, even the low hanging fruit tastes sour.

"It was terrible," admitted Earnshaw. "We were lucky to get any points and we have just let Plymouth get 36.

"I am not being disrespectful to them but Plymouth won't score 36 again this season. We probably gave them all their points," the director of rugby lamented.

They gave 26 of them to Alex Davies, a competent rather than lavishly gifted fly half who kicked five penalties, three conversions and bagged a try.

In return they offered a brace from Griffiths and one from Simon Hunt, whose strike rate remains high with three this season.

But even that isn't enough to win on afternoons such as this when all the should haves, could haves and might haves count for very little.